


The Patient

by Derin



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-27
Updated: 2020-04-27
Packaged: 2021-03-02 03:14:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,337
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23868094
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Derin/pseuds/Derin
Summary: You are a nurse and the head archivist of the Magnus Institute keeps showing up with very strange injuries.
Comments: 15
Kudos: 191





	The Patient

**Author's Note:**

> I don't know why this is in second person. It seemed like the right choice at the time for some reason.

The first time you see him is unremarkable. He’s in for a flu shot, and he’s a little nervous about the needle but trying to hide it, like most young men do. You use your go-to move and ask him about himself to distract him while the needle goes in. Patients always assume you’re listening to their answer, like you don’t make small talk with a dozen people a day. The only reason his job at the Magnus Institute registers at all is that you think, briefly, that it’s a cool name.

The second time you see him is years later, in A&E. His hair is greying too early, he’s covered in little pocked scars whose origin you couldn’t begin to guess at, and he looks very tired, although that last one might be because he’s hunched over, hands pressed to his abdomen. The man next to him isn’t physically touching him, but is hyperalert, glancing back at him with every flinch or pained sound, eyes tracking anyone who gets close. “I cut myself with a bread knife,” the patient admits with an embarrassed smile as you rush him in to see the doctor and tell his protective companion that he’ll have to wait outside.

You glimpse the wound before you leave. You’ve been in this business long enough to know that no bread knife makes a cut like that. When people lie about injuries, it’s usually a sex thing, a drug thing, a crime thing, or an abuse thing. You can’t help but wonder how he got those suspicious pocked scars. They don’t look like cigarette burns, or anything similar, but...

You see his overprotective companion, pacing in the corridor like a restless lion, and hope that Doctor Hadfield remembers to direct his patient to the appropriate helplines, out of the man’s sight.

The third time you see him, he looks desperate. Jumpy. He doesn’t want to give his details to the receptionist, but he obviously needs help; you can see the skin peeling from his ruined-looking hand. He’s alone this time, and keeping his head down; does he need protection? Is the other man after him? Should you call the police?

But it’s an impulsive thought that you know better than to follow up. If he wants the police involved, he’ll call them himself. You interfering would only make things worse.

As you dress the wound, you can’t help but notice that the burns don’t make sense. The skin is badly damaged, but the muscles and tendons underneath move fine. There was something very precise about this injury, and you can’t fathom how it was done.

He’s admitted overnight for observation, but when you go to check on him later that night, he’s gone.

The fourth time you see him is just a couple of days later, and he’s with his overprotective companion again. This time, his throat’s been cut. You manage to sneak close enough to get a bit of a look; the injury doesn’t look serious, his assailant stopped before slicing through anything important, but you don’t get a chance for a thorough inspection. That’s the doctor’s job, and you have a lot of other patients to manage.

Besides, his companion is watching you suspiciously. He doesn’t look at all dangerous. But they often don’t.

The fifth time, he shows up on one of your wards, in a coma. Building collapse, apparently. Nobody seems to know that much about it and it’d be weird to keep asking, so you accept this and do your job. The overprotective companion visits him for awhile, but eventually stops. His other regular visitor is a young woman who you come to recognise as she drops in every week or two. The patient’s continued survival doesn’t make any sense, medically speaking, but the brain scans keep showing activity, so you all work to keep him alive.

You can’t even bring yourself to be surprised when, in the middle of a shift six months later, the woman rushes in to tell you he’s woken up. Of course this would happen on your shift.

You try to make small talk while you draw the blood for his tests. This probably isn’t the best choice for someone who’s been dead to the world for six months, but you can’t help yourself; you have to know about this weirdo. He’s a lot more tight-lipped than your first meeting, although you don’t really notice at the time, distracted as you are by eyes far too alert for a long-term coma victim, eyes that seem to stare right through you. It’s not until after you clock out that you realise he told you basically nothing, despite all the talking between you two. Come to think of it, you mostly told him about yourself.

The sixth time you see him isn’t an emergency room visit. He looks more tired and restless than ever, and something in his gaze makes you want to avoid him, so you pause just around the corner until he and the woman he’s with (another one you don’t know) pass. They are arguing over the cough he’s apparently there to get checked out; he’s insisting that he can’t get sick any more, that no infection can touch him, and she’s protesting that they don’t know that, they don’t have any data, and it’s best to be safe.

It’s none of your business. You shouldn’t be snooping on patients. But the ‘mysterious coma guy’ is a bit of a legend by now, so it’s not difficult to pick up the rumour that when they x-rayed his lungs, they found two missing ribs. Ribs that you know weren’t missing in his X-rays after the building collapse. They even say that Doctor Murray (who refuses to confirm anything, insisting he hasn’t been gossiping about patients) couldn’t find any scars or evidence of their actual removal.

But that part is probably nonsense. With a man so covered in scars, how would anyone even be able to tell?

You think he’s come in for a seventh time when you see the woman who visited him in his coma, arguing loudly with a doctor as they exit a private room. You’re not having a good week; something horrible and unexplainable recently happened, something you don’t want to think about, and this is a good distraction, so even though you shouldn’t, you wait for them to disappear down the corridor and slip into the room to see what’s happened this time. But it isn’t him – it’s a woman, with fresh gauze taped over both eyes. She turns her sightless face to you and asks in a voice far too calm and resolute for somebody in her condition who you are. You leave quickly, but not before catching a glimpse of the personal effects on her bedside table. There’s an employee ID among them, identifying her as working for the Magnus Institute.

The actual seventh time you see him, it’s more that he sees you. You’re not in the hospital; you’re about to get on a flight for a long-awaited holiday when you sense, on the back of your neck, the most intense stare you’ve ever felt. You’re not surprised to see who it is. He asks how you’ve been, and you answer without thinking about it. He looks tired, restless, hungry; there’s something predatory in his gaze. He seems to look deep into you as he opens his mouth to ask you something else, but before he speaks, he seems to get a hold of himself. Gives himself a little shake. Turns away.

You’re not sure why you feel so relieved.

You watch him head for a terminal and stand in line with another man. It takes you a moment to recognise him as the man who’d accompanied him on a couple of his emergency visits; they’ve both changed so much. You resist the urge to glance up and see what plane they’re getting on, where they’re going.

You decide that you probably don’t want to know.


End file.
